1. Field of Invention
The invention relates to the field of automatic remote billing. In particular, the present invention relates to a method for directly converting commodity-consumption data into consumer billing via existing telecommunications systems. More particularly, this invention relates to an automated bill-generation method using existing telecommunications billing systems for remotely generated, automatically delivered commodities and services.
2. Prior Art
A variety of remotely transmitted commodities are provided to a delivery system in bulk, on a continuously available basis, so that individual users of these commodities can consume them in such quantities and at such times as each user's needs may demand. These commodities can be divided into two categories--Category I and Category II, respectively--based on the way in which they are provided and billed for. Category I includes the traditional utilities such as water, gas, electricity, and is characterized in part by the fact that each is continuously available at each individual user's site, at which site the user taps into the commodity. Each Category I commodity is also characterized by the fact that its usage by each user is recorded by a meter at the individual user's site and the consequence that the provider of that commodity must employ human meter readers to periodically visit each of the users' sites in order to collect usage data and then to carry this data back to the provider's site for conversion into billing data. In addition to recording the amount of the commodity used, the meter may also make a record of the times of use, that information to be used, for example, in time-of-use dependent billing.
Each traditional Category I commodity has had its own dedicated delivery means--including, respectively, electric transmission lines, gas lines, and water pipes. However, the proliferation of other transmission means--including AM/FM radio broadcast, and more recently, microwave, satellite, and cable transmission, as well as the increasing use of the World Wide Web--has made possible the delivery in this continuously available manner of a variety of other commodities, such as entertainment and information. These commodities tend to fall into Category II.
Category II commodities can also be continuously available at sites remote from their provider. A significant difference is that when the commodity is demanded by the user, it must at that time be sent out by the provider. (A simple example is the pay-per-view movie sent out to an individual user over a TV cable when the user requests it.) While such on-demand commodities may be "continuously available," their availability is at the source, delivery is made in reaction to a demand from the user to the source, and so monitoring of delivered quantities and delivery times is customarily done at the source, rather than at the point of delivery. In other words, there is no need for the meter readers; billing data is from the outset located at the provider's site. Thus the remotely provided, continuously available commodities making up Category II are much more convenient to their provider, in terms of accounting and billing, and generally less expensive in terms of overhead. On the other hand, the requirement that the user undertake a specific initiation-action separate from simply starting to use the commodity (as one would do with Category I commodities) and the concomitant uncertainty of commodity accessibility at the time the initiation-action is taken makes the consumption of Category II commodities less convenient for the user. It is desirable to provide the ease-of-consumption of Category I commodities with something approaching the efficiency of billing of Category II commodities.
A survey of the prior art reveals many attempts to improve the efficiency of billing for Category I commodities. These attempts all incorporate to one degree or another automatically reading meters for collecting and storing consumption data in machine-readable form, consumption data that is then transferred to the provider's central location, by means of a traditional meter-reader carrying a data-collection device or by more automatic means. Once collected and transferred to the provider's site, these data still must be manipulated in various ways to generate customer billing. For example, one of the earliest of these methods is described by Lane et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 3,231,670; issued in 1966). Lane et al. employs a meter-coupling device capable of generating audio tones, the combination and frequency of which indicate the needle position of each of the dials of the meter that is periodically polled by the provider. The more common automatically reading meter in use today, however, is ofthe type described by Bogaart et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 3,553,376; issued in 1971). Meters of the Bogaart et al. type generate an electronic pulse for each incremental unit of consumption detected by the meter, which uses the pulses to continually update the accumulated total usage stored at the user location, either in the meter itself or in some associated device. Some of these counting-and-storing meters have the facility to also record time and/or time-of-use data. Some such meters continue to display the usage data on mechanical dials, while others display the data on digital readout displays. In any event, the total usage stored by the meter is then collected by a meter reader with a data collector device that plugs into the usage-storage device at the user's site.
All of the automatically reading prior-art meters store usage data in the form of the total number of units--be it units of the commodity consumed or monetary units, which may depend jointly on the amount consumed and the time at which it was consumed--that have accumulated since the time that the connection was made and the meter activated. Thus, when the data are transferred to the commodity provider, that provider must then determine usage for the current billing period by subtracting from the latest reading the reading at the end of the previous billing period. Although this accounting and billing method is firmly rooted in long-standing common practice, it is archaically cumbersome, requiring periodic calculations dependent on the maintenance of a base of historical data. Furthermore, each such Category I continuously available commodity demands its own proprietary accounting and billing system and related historical data storage system, the maintenance of which is burdensome and expensive.
Even with the inefficiencies noted, the automatically reading meters are beneficial in that they eliminate the source of human error that existed when meters were read visually and recorded manually. This is indeed a strength and represents a significant advance over the earlier tradition that demanded maximum human intervention in the collection of commodity usage-data.
The next step after the introduction of automatic storage of usage data was the idea of automated usage-data collection without the need of a human meter reader traveling to the user's location. The prior art, including Lane et al. and Bogaart et al., discloses two general types of remote automatic-meter-reading systems using automatically reading meters. Both generally rely on the transmission of meter-collected data via telephone lines between the user's location and that of the provider. There are exceptions to the telephone-transmission-model, such as the method taught by Martin (U.S. Pat. No. 3,742,142; issued in 1973) wherein data transmission may be accomplished via "AC carrier lines or radio" in addition to telephone, and by Jahr et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 4,707,852; issued in 1987) which includes "coaxial cables" along with "public switched telephone networks" as transmission means. Also, the system disclosed by Blethen et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 3,937,890; issued in 1976) teaches a method of data transmission from the user's automatically reading meter to the provider's data-collection station via a cable television (CATV) connection. Nevertheless, a telephone connection is the common, nearly universally described means of data transmission, whether it involves a dedicated, single-purpose telephone line (for frequent or continuous data transmission) or general-purpose telephone lines intermittently seized for data transfer.
Regardless of transmission means, the two general types of remote automatic-meter-reading systems differ with respect to the nature of the action that initiates billing-data transfer. In one approach, this action is taken at the user's location and consists of the automatically reading meter initiating a coupling to the provider's data storage system and then dumps its data. In the other model, a polling signal generated at the provider's central location is transmitted to the user's metering equipment which, then sends its data back to the provider. Verma et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 4,833,618; issued in 1989) teaches an example of the former approach, wherein data transfer is initiated at the user's location. The Verma et al. system includes a microprocessor-controlled component coupled to the automatically reading meter at the user's location, this component being responsible for sua sponte initiating data transfer at pre-programmed times, e.g., once a month. The Verma et al. system employs a modem to seize the user's telephone line, to then dial--and establish the connection with With the--the provider's central location, and finally to effect the data transfer. Additionally, such a system must employ another modem at the provider's central location to answer the telephone call from the user's location and to establish a connection for receiving the data transferred from the user's location The microprocessor-controlled device at the user location in the Verma et al. system must incorporate sophisticated control circuitry and programming logic in order to format and/or encode the data for transmission, to provide security means to ensure the telephone connection is made to the correct provider system, to check and verify the integrity of the data to be transferred, to check and verify the successful transfer of the data, to repeat the transfer upon the occurrence of any of a number of possible transmission errors until a successful transfer is accomplished, and to log and document each successful periodic data transfer. Moreover, such a system must incorporate an additional device or computer program at the provider's central location to likewise detect and correct errors and validate the integrity of the transferred data, to identify the data source, to associate the received data with a particular user location, and to store the data. A requirement of such a system, whether explicit or implicit, must be the introduction of the data into the provider's billing system, the calculation of billing amounts according to the provider's proprietary schedule of rates, and the generation of invoices for distribution to the various users.
An example of the second general type of automatic-meter-reading system, wherein data transfer is initiated by an action at the provider's location, is taught by Spaulding (U.S. Pat. No. 4,004,097; issued in 1977). Functionally, the effective difference between the system of Spaulding and the user-location-initiated system discussed above is that the function of determining the legitimacy of the caller--i.e., in this case, that the call is properly originating from the provider--takes place at the user's location. Aside from that difference, however, it can be seen that in Spaulding and all the related prior-art require all of the same system components--microprocessor- or programming-controlled monitoring and validation devices, modems at both locations, storage devices at both locations, and the expressed or implied connection to a billing system--are just as necessary in the provider-initiated automatic-meter-reading systems as they are in user-initiated systems. In addition, Spaulding goes on to describe in detail the form of the data typically necessary in all such systems, as well as the process of formatting and encoding the data. It can be seen that such data records as must be prepared for transfer between the user's location and the provider's location must include at least, in addition to the encoded data itself, an identification-and-validation code related to the particular user, an identification-and-validation code related to the provider, time and/or date codes, and a mechanism for confirming data-integrity.
The obvious disadvantages inherent in prior-art remote automatic-meter-reading-and-billing systems lies with the plurality of specialized components required, the difficulty of integrating such a plurality of components into a single-function system, the difficulties presented by the need to coordinate activities at two separate locations, the complex data structure, the difficult task of validating the data record and its source, the difficult task of implementing security systems to prevent tampering and to ensure privacy. Additionally, as a result of such complexities and difficulties, and o the time and the repetition of tasks necessary to resolve them, usually making use of the user's existing ordinary telephone line, such systems have the additional drawback of customer inconvenience. Thus, for all of these reasons, such automatic-meter-reading systems have not found favor in the actual practices of commodity providers, and the traditional traveling meter reader remains the chief means of usage data collection, be it by a visual reading and hand-recording or by transfer of machine-readable data from the user-site device to a portable data collector carried by the meter reader.
It can be seen from examining the prior art related to automatically reading meters, and the automatic-meter-reading systems that have been proposed to use them, that the prior art has been fixated upon replicating in automation the paradigm of the traditional traveling meter reader, including all of the peripheral functions that had been necessary to support that institution. This has resulted in a retention in the semi-automated billing system of many of the expensive inefficiencies of the totally manual system. What is needed is a paradigm shift. More specifically, what is needed is a method of remote, automated accounting and billing for meterable commodities that dispenses with the transfer of actual meter readings, whether done by means of a meter reader or by automatic electronic transfer to the provider. What is also needed is such a method that makes use of installed and available metering equipment and also of existing automated billing services. What is yet further needed is suc a method that presents little or no inconvenience to the consumer of the commodities to which it is applied. Finally, what is needed is such a billing method that is applicable not only to the traditional metered commodities, but to a wide range of the continuously available, remotely generated commodities that are newly entering the market place.